8/9/2008: Mieke Bal and the Private Screening

Disclaimer: The following entry does not reflect the opinions of the program.

As a business administration and international studies major researching the international political economy and working for a humanitarian/development organization, I am often dubious of work the humanities. For me, poetry analysis, while certainly interesting and undeniably an exercise in critical thinking, is not particularly relevant unless the “knowledge” gained by interpreting a line in that poem can be applied to a social, political, or economic situation. And if this “knowledge” is kept within a select group of academics, its production is all the more pointless.

My tremendous respect for Mieke Bal stems from her ability to incorporate contemporary issues and an efficient, wide-reaching medium into her work in the humanities. She produces “untraditional documentaries” without narration; each film is a collection of scenes intended to “activate” the mind of the reader. The audio/visual medium serves two purposes: while academics papers are not often written with the subject but about the subject, the subjects of a documentary obviously are involved in the making and often participate in the editing of a video, meaning viewers have a much closer connection with the study. Secondly, a film reaches a different and broader audience than an academic paper (even if the video is shown in an art gallery rather than French national television). The knowledge produced is no longer confined to a close-knit academic circle and therefore necessarily involves and "activates" the outside world.

We were fortunate to watch three of Mieke’s videos—Access Denied, Lost in Space, and Mille et un Jours—in a private screening this afternoon. For those who missed the screening, synopses can be found here. Access Denied focused on cross-cultural understanding (or in some cases, a conspicuous lack of it) and the concept of collective memory, especially in the context of pre-1948 and al nakba. In terms of collective memory, I found Ihab's interview scenes with the older generation to be the most potent: their memory of British-cantoned Palestine as a paradise (one man asserts that “there were no problems”) and their insistence that the advent of Israel is responsible for the destruction of this utopia. It is interesting to think about how this feeling (that of being wronged, of being deprived of what is rightfully yours) has been transferred to a younger generation, one with no individual memory of life pre-Israel. For me, the most powerful and tear--jerking scene was the middle-aged man not old enough to have experienced life in the pre-1948 Palestine who nonetheless asserts that "It's my land. My land and I want it!" I was also made acutely aware of my own position as a social researcher while watching the "antropologist in the field..." This scene has had a lasting impression on me and the importance of "cultural competency" (to use a word from Emily S and Lauren) in interacting with human subjects. It also made me reflect once again on the outsider/insider divide.

Lost in Space was intended to showcase the disconnect between ideas of home, borders, and security. Here is Mieke's introduction to the film (split into two parts due to my lack of camera saavy) and the debriefing proccess afterwards:





Because you have access to the summaries, I will just say that the most interesting things about the film were the background shots and sounds (firefighters failing to put out a smoking building, "punks" ignoring their dog, street noise drowning out the speakers in order to represent the way their voices are often lost in the world) and the English subtitles for even those who speak English as a first language. Apparently this was done to establish equality among the speakers.

The last film, Mille et un Jours, concerns a Tunisian man and his upcoming "arranged-consent-greencard-love" marraige. What I found most interesting about this film really had to do with the editing proccess and how Mieke made the film in the context of the tension between traditional Tunisian norms and values and assimiliation into western society. Thinking about the freshly washed lettuce ("now the French will know that Arabs are clean people"), the concern over the scene with the bag of meat, and other parts of the film making and editing proccess so affected by the social and political context made me realize the extent to which Mieke has managed to use art and the humanities to capture the intricacies of contemporary social phenomena and the priveleges and responsibilities that accompany this. While each film is certainly a work of art, it is also societally relevant and constructive in the sense that it informs and motivates the audience.

At the end of the day, I am deeply impressed by Mieke Bal's work and her way of situating art in a relevant and important social/political context. These videos have changed the way I feel about digital media-- because I have seen how one can be respectful and non-invasive while capturing the subject of study on a much more personal and deep level (especially thinking about the closeness I felt to Tarek in Mille et un Jours), I am now more open to using video and other types of media to communicate the findings of my social research.